Surrendering to the Italian's Command

by Kim Lawrence

  She inhaled, living a second time through that mind-blowing moment when their eyes had connected. The heat that had flashed along her nerve endings had meant that when the anticipated recognition finally came Tess had barely registered it, let alone taken any form of satisfaction from it.

  She pressed a hand to the pulse still beating frantically at the base of her throat. It had been like watching her knee jump after someone struck the right spot with a patella hammer, a reflex she had no control over. Danilo Raphael’s dark stare had touched a spot, one Tess hadn’t even known she had, and the resultant electrical charge that zinged along her nerve endings had been equally outside her control. Not an experience she enjoyed.

  She might have been more prepared for this weirdness if she hadn’t, up until now, worked on the assumption that everything about that evening had been exaggerated by fear and the flu—only it hadn’t! If anything, her memory had downplayed Danilo Raphael. He was darker, taller; her memory recalled a man who was obviously better looking than, in her opinion, any man had a right to be, but it had not accurately recorded the innate, earthy sensuality he projected.

  ‘No, he just writes the cheques,’ she heard Natalia rebut, and dragged her attention back to the pretty young woman in the wheelchair. ‘You work for me and I say it’s Tess.’ She angled a look that was half teasing, half challenging across the room at her brother.

  ‘The trick, Nat,’ Tess explained, ‘is letting a man think it’s his idea.’

  It was my idea, Danilo thought grimly. I brought this woman here...and she was already creating ripples.

  ‘We can leave the discussion until the morning if you prefer, Miss... Tess?’ Perhaps recognising the coldness of his words or picking up on his cousin’s puzzled looks, he added, ‘I hope you had a good journey and Franco—’

  ‘Great journey,’ she cut in. The effort of smiling was starting to make her jaw ache. ‘And everyone has been very kind and so welcoming.’ Until now! ‘And I’d prefer to get it over with now.’ Flushing at the implication left by her words, she hastily tried to soften her comment by adding, ‘That is, you’re very kind, Mr Raphael, but I’m fine to talk...so long as you don’t read anything into the odd yawn.’ She turned towards Nat and smiled. ‘See you in the morning. Goodnight, Franco. Admit it, you enjoyed the film.’

  ‘I might have,’ Franco conceded, reacting to the teasing light in her eyes with an enigmatic look that morphed into a grin as he went on to explain, ‘But if I admitted that I’d have to kill you to save my reputation. Buono notte, Tess, it was a great night.’ He gave her a hug, nodded in the direction of the tall, brooding presence of his cousin and left, closing the door behind him.

  * * *

  The sound threatened to trigger a nervous meltdown in Tess. Without anyone else around to dissipate it, the tangible physical charge Danilo exuded took on the form of an electrical buzz in the air. It seemed amazing that the last time she’d been alone with him she hadn’t really registered it. Even more amazing was the fact his presence had made her feel safe and secure that night. She was starting to realise that that had been a one-off!

  ‘Alone at last.’ She winced as her nerves found an outlet in flippancy.

  He didn’t react. ‘Take a seat, Miss Jones.’

  Her eyes widened in a flicker of dismay. ‘Why? Is this going to take long, Mr Raph...?’ She left the retaliatory addition unfinished; one of them had to be a grown-up and it didn’t look as if it was going to be him. ‘Thanks but I feel like I’ve been sitting all day.’

  ‘So how long are we to have the pleasure of your company?’

  His tone was perfectly polite but somehow he managed to send the strong impression that five minutes would be too long. Tess fought the urge to ask him just what the hell she had done wrong and replied evenly.

  ‘Your PA seemed to think me going back a week before the next school term starts would be all right. Is it?’

  Danilo paused, thought of his sister’s laughing face and tipped his head, unable to bring himself to ask how she had magicked the transformation in his sister he’d observed. ‘You seem to be getting on well with Natalia?’

  Tess ignored the fact his comment sounded more like an accusation than a compliment and responded with perfect honesty. ‘That’s not a big ask. Nat is a lovely girl. You must be so proud of her.’

  ‘She tires easily.’ He frowned because it sounded as if he was putting up obstacles, then continued to because he was!

  ‘Helena filled me in on the basics.’

  His glance, defying his fractured self-control, had begun to slide down her body but the mention of his PA brought his gaze back to her face.

  ‘So what else did Helena fill you in on?’

  ‘Not a lot. She mentioned the car accident. Though you’d already told me a bit about it. How it robbed you of your parents.’ Did the perfect tailoring hide scars from the same incident? Did that explain his touchy reaction? Survivor’s guilt? Or was his body marked by the tragedy that had put his sister in a wheelchair? It was the stab of painful empathy that speared through her that pushed Tess to question, ‘Were you in the car?’ She bit her lip, her eyes widening in dismay the moment the words were out. ‘Sorry, that is none of my business.’

  He elevated a dark sardonic brow, fooled not a jot by the down-bent head. She was about as meek as a tsunami! ‘I am none of your business.’

  She nodded, acknowledging she’d been firmly put in her place.

  ‘But, no, I was not in the car. I was out of the country.’

  His voice was flat. Too flat, she decided, wondering what nerve she had touched before she reminded herself that it was none of her business.

  ‘If you’re worried I’m too ancient to connect with your sister you shouldn’t be. I can just about remember what it was like to be nineteen.’

  ‘But you can’t remember what it was like to be in a wheelchair,’ he fired back, angry because that hadn’t been his first thought. His first thought when she’d mentioned her age, typically selfish, had been that she was not too young for him.

  Not that he was going to do anything about it, not while she was under his roof anyway. He might not have deliberately compartmentalised his life but it had happened and the results spoke for themselves.

  ‘No, obviously not.’

  ‘Of all the frustrations it involves, of having the life, the future you had planned torn away from you.’

  The suddenness of it, the painful strength of the emotions that poured off Danilo, made her take an involuntary step back from him.

  He might doubt her ability to emote but Tess no longer doubted his. She felt a stab of guilt, realising that she had been on the brink of labelling him an unimaginative, control-freak bully.

  ‘I don’t suppose that any of us can, but we can try...?’

  Her soft response brought his haunted stare back to her face. ‘I would change places with her in a heartbeat if I could.’

  He had thought it so many times but never voiced it so why the hell had he now? He lowered his eyelids to conceal his struggle as he reasserted control.

  ‘She would probably feel the same way if the roles were reversed.’

  Danilo’s jaw clenched as he fought the urge to lash out at her verbally.

  ‘But,’ he said, enunciating each word slowly, ‘they are not.’

  If he had to lose it, why had he done so in front of this woman, who seemed to be a bottomless well of teeth-aching understanding?

  He had raised his barriers so completely that if she hadn’t witnessed the moment with her own eyes Tess wouldn’t have believed it had happened, but it had and she’d seen something of Danilo that he hid from the world. He’d probably never forgive her for that.

  ‘So, your duties...’

  ‘Duties?’ she echoed. She hadn’t been expecting that but she was fine with it; she could multitask with the best of them. She supposed that was how rich people stayed that way: they got value for money. Besides, busy was good. It stopped her
thinking about what waited for her at home, the issues that being here was delaying not resolving.

  ‘I worked for a housekeeping agency when I was at college and—’

  ‘You think this interests me why, exactly?’ he drawled.

  ‘Well, if you want me to work some hours in the house or garden as well—’

  He looked at her as though she was speaking a foreign language, which of course she was, though that was easy to forget in a household where virtually everyone she had met spoke excellent English.

  When Danilo finally realised what she was talking about he gave a thin, scornful smile. ‘I do not require you to scrub floors. We have staff for that. I am speaking of what I expect of you in regard to your duties for my sister.’

  Embarrassed colour flooded Tess’s face as she gnawed down on her lip, unwittingly drawing his gaze to the pink fullness.

  ‘I misunderstood.’ And felt pretty stupid. ‘I guess I haven’t got my head into the palace frame of mind yet.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope we have no more misunderstandings.’

  Was she imagining things or had that been a warning? Maybe not. She was getting the impression that Danilo Raphael didn’t give his victims warnings—he went straight for the jugular.

  Her hand lifted to her exposed neck but the shiver that went through her wasn’t fear.

  ‘My sister recently had a...’

  He paused and Tess, who had given a guilty start when he started speaking, adopted an attentive expression, pushing away the lingering image of his lips brushing her neck.

  ‘There was,’ he continued slowly, ‘a...’ He lifted his hands in a kind of to hell with it gesture and finished his explanation with an impatient rush. ‘She’s just split up with her boyfriend.’ It went against the grain to call the kid that but it got his point across, which was the main thing, without going into detail.

  And it did: the sympathy on Tess’s face was instantaneous. ‘Tough. Was it...’ she hesitated to ask if Natalia had been dumped ‘...her idea?’

  ‘No, it was my idea. The boy took advantage of her vulnerability to insinuate...’ His jaw clenched as his anger threatened to resurface. ‘He was bad news. He already had a criminal record. I was prepared to give him a chance but he abused my trust.’

  ‘He works here?’

  ‘He worked here,’ Danilo corrected grimly.

  ‘So your sister was all right with you sending him away?’

  His glance dropped, the dark lashes that framed his incredible eyes hiding his expression momentarily. Tess was quite glad of a moment’s release from that compelling dark stare.

  ‘She will appreciate her lucky escape, in time.’ And he was realising the absurdity of his compulsion to defend his actions right now. ‘And in the meantime I would appreciate it if you informed me if this boy or any others try to—’

  Tess held up her hand to stem the forceful flow of his words. ‘Are you asking me to spy on your sister?’

  His dark brows twitched into an irritated straight line above his masterful nose. ‘I wouldn’t call it that.’

  ‘Well, I would,’ she exclaimed. ‘And the idea makes me uncomfortable.’

  A look of astonishment crossed his lean features. ‘You are saying you won’t?’ Such an eventuality had not even crossed his mind, any more than it would cross his mind that any employee would turn around and say no when he gave an instruction.

  Her chin lifted, the gleam in her eyes contrasted with her calm delivery. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The boy abused my trust.’

  ‘And I’d be abusing Natalia’s trust if I agreed to do what you want. And maybe you shouldn’t push it?’ she ventured.

  He sucked in an astonished breath. She was offering him advice? ‘Push it?’

  ‘Quit while you’re ahead?’ she offered by way of further explanation. The moment the words had left her lips, even without his rapidly darkening expression, she knew she had gone too far, but for some reason she just couldn’t stop herself. The words just kept coming! ‘I mean, there are not many girls of Natalia’s age who would accept their brother deciding who they should or shouldn’t date. I wouldn’t have...if I’d had a brother...which obviously I don’t.’

  ‘If you had a brother to watch out for you perhaps you wouldn’t have to rely on a stranger to rescue you from your poor choice of men.’

  His words were chosen to deliver the maximum hurt and when they clearly hit home Danilo promptly felt like an utter heel.

  Even the reasonable defence that Tess could not expect to censure him that way and expect him not to retaliate did not lessen his level of guilt.

  She probably didn’t even think she’d done anything wrong; she was just being honest! It was a justification that never failed to make him see red.

  He stared at her quivering lips and wondered how it was possible to want to throttle a woman one moment and comfort her the next.

  Danilo did neither, but sitting on the fence was not a natural position for him. He had a black-and-white attitude to life. A decision was either right or wrong, a person someone he wanted to know or one to be avoided. A woman was one he desired or one who would drive him insane. Yet Tess Jones combined both in one small exquisite package!

  ‘I did not choose him,’ she quivered out finally. ‘And before you remind me, I know that running away is never the answer but this will give me breathing space,’ she added, clearly dealing with the subject before he used it as another offensive weapon.

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that, and I know what I did say was untrue, and for that I apologise.’ Even after the rare mea culpa moment he continued to feel as guilty as hell. ‘And if there is any help or legal advice whatsoever I can offer you to resolve your problem at home—’

  Tess was totally thrown by the unexpected apology. Nevertheless she had to make it clear to Danilo that she wasn’t about to be pushed around by him, any more than she wanted to be intimidated by Ben. ‘I prefer to resolve my own problems my way,’ she announced as though she had it all worked out.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  But he wasn’t being fair. He’d been anything but! So tell him, don’t just stand there taking it, the impatient voice in her head urged.

  ‘Ever since you arrived I get the impression... Look, have I done something wrong? Broken some rule, kept Nat up too late? It was light beer and she is over eighteen. It’s not my imagination, is it? You’ve been looking at me as though...as though I was a fraud. I understand that I’m not what you expected—or probably wanted.’

  ‘I do not think you are a fraud.’ He wasn’t going near the wanting...the wanting was the problem! He couldn’t look at her mouth without wanting to taste it. To feel her under him...

  ‘If you’re going to sack me I’d prefer you told me now, not kept me on as some sort of charity case.’

  He dragged his eyes upwards.

  ‘Do you want to leave?’

  Did he want her to say yes or no? Danilo had no patience with people who did not know their own mind so recognising the ambivalence of his feelings drew a furrow in his brow.

  ‘I like Natalia.’

  The furrow smoothed.

  ‘And I think I can be good for her.’

  It wasn’t relief he felt, just the satisfaction of having the decision made. ‘I see you don’t suffer from false modesty, but how about we give it a trial week?’

  She tilted her head to one side and looked up at him, a half-smile tugging at her lips. The speed with which she had recovered amazed him. Most women he knew liked to drag out an argument until they had forgotten what it was about.

  ‘Fine, I’ll let you know if you pass the trial.’

  The door had closed behind her before Danilo allowed himself to laugh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘FRANCO IS TAKING us out for a drink.’

  ‘That’s nice of him.’ Nat sounded casual, but...? Tess had been here a week now. Long enough to recognise some signals. She angled a curious look at Natalia’
s face, wondering what she was missing this time. ‘Does Franco know?’

  The question drew a slightly forced laugh that suggested Tess’s first instinct was right. ‘Not yet,’ Natalia admitted. ‘But you’ve been here a week and it’s time we showed you the action in Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina.’

  ‘I already have,’ Tess reminded Nat. She had been enchanted by the nearest small town to the estate, which itself was about midway between Florence and Pisa. It was a charming, picture-perfect medieval town surrounded by a forest of chestnut trees. Their visit had been short but she could have spent the day wandering the cobbled streets, catching glimpses of the valley below.

  ‘At night it becomes a different place. Well, not really,’ she added, with a grin. ‘But there is this very nice bar. Danilo takes me there for lunch sometimes because it’s so nice.’

  ‘Franco might have other plans.’

  ‘He might but he’ll change them. He’ll jump at the chance to take you out even if he has to bring me too. You must have noticed that he’s got a crush on you?’

  Tess had noticed but she thought it was harmless with a shelf life, she suspected, of a few days. Her half-smile faded, but what would happen if his cousin got the wrong idea? What if Danilo thought that she was encouraging Franco, or even using Franco to try to make Danilo feel jealous? What are you doing, Tess?

  Tess brought the inner dialogue to an abrupt halt. There was a trap and she recognised it, which meant it was one dark hole she was not about to leap into. Oh, sure, she had observed how eager everyone was to defer to Danilo to change plans, but even while she felt removed from this collective rush for approval she had some sympathy.

  Because despite his arrogance—or was that because of it?—and the ruthlessness that was often only just below the surface, Danilo could also be charming, when he wanted to be, and then there was his smile, which was knockout, and his charisma was off the scale!

  Her immunity to the please Danilo disease had made her feel a little smug, but maybe this was how it happened? How did the medical books term it...an insidious onset?